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Q&A with Puru Jena, Ph.D.
Puru Jena, Ph.D.
For approximately 30 years, Puru Jena, Ph.D., an educator and prolific researcher, has been dedicated to teaching future generations of physicists. As a distinguished professor of physics at Virginia Commonwealth University, his research interests range from atomic and molecular physics to solid state and chemical physics. His studies are aimed at understanding properties of novel materials at an atomic scale using state-of-the-art theoretical techniques. He has acted as principal investigator on projects totaling more than $8 million in grant funding.
In July 2007, Jena became one of nine tenured, research-active scientists and engineers selected nationwide as a 2007 Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., where he was able to engage his passion for science and technology with foreign policy. His task was to advise and educate policy officials, including the Secretary of State, of complex, scientific issues and their potential impact on U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Following a one-year term, Jena returned to VCU, but remains available to the U.S. government as an expert consultant for short-term projects for a period of five years. He has published more than 350 research papers in a number of academic journals.
Here’s more about his research in his own words:
1. Describe the scope of your research.
My research focuses on the science of particles at the nanoscale. A nanometer is about one hundred thousandth of a human hair. At this size, scale properties of materials — whether they are optical, magnetic, electronic or mechanical — are drastically different from their behavior in the bulk phase. My focus is to understand why this is so and how to manipulate the properties by controlling their size.
I first began working on nanostructures in 1984 with Bijan K. Rao, Ph.D., a dear colleague who has since passed away. Our work with the nanoscale began long before President Clinton announced it as a national initiative. Our areas of expertise differed greatly — Bijan worked with atoms and molecules and I was working on condensed matter systems that have billions and billions of atoms. But together we decided to concentrate on materials that lie between atoms and molecules and solids. This field later became known as nanoscience.
Scientists have long experimented with methods for controlling material behavior by playing with composition. Reducing their size provides another powerful way to do the same thing. Thus, by manipulating both the composition and size, we have an unprecedented opportunity to create materials with properties that can be custom-tailored.
We can view some of these nanoparticles as super atoms that have the chemistry of some of the elements in the periodic table, except that they are bigger than an atom and may be composed of more than one element. These super atoms can be imagined to form the third dimension of a new periodic table, providing the possibility of unlimited ways to synthesize novel materials.
2. How can physics research benefit us in our daily lives? What are some practical applications?
A fundamental understanding of material behavior at the atomic and molecular level allows us the power to design and synthesize new materials with properties never before known to man. For example, it is possible to create magnetic particles from nonmagnetic elements; transparent materials from those that are opaque in bulk phase; metallic nanoparticles that absorb radiation that otherwise will be reflected; and nanoparticles that are reactive while their bulk counterpart is chemically inert; and so on.
These properties can be used to synthesize an entirely new class of materials where the nanoparticles, as opposed to atoms, form the building blocks. Applications of these particles are many and diverse. They range from drugs that can treat cancer without the harmful effects of radiation to sensors of minute quantities of toxins. Other applications include catalyzing reactions at lower temperatures and pressures and storing large amounts of hydrogen for use in the automotive industry. Additionally, scientists could create efficient solar cells to harness the sun’s energy, materials that repel water just like the leaves of lotus and electronic materials that can lead to much smaller and faster computers.
3. Describe your recent experience as a 2007 Jefferson Science Fellow with the U.S. Department of State. How will this experience impact your research moving forward?
For a one-year term I used my expertise in science and technology to help guide policy issues to advance foreign policy and promote research and development into technologies of great societal value. Among those issues is energy security and environmental quality. For example, our dependence on fossil fuels creates economic and national security issues not only because of the rising cost of oil, but also because we have to depend upon foreign sources. Additionally, fossil fuels are harmful to the environment as they release greenhouse gases. To solve our oil-dependence issues, we need to develop alternate sources of renewable, sustainable and clean energy that are within our nation’s borders.
In March of this year, through the U.S. State Department, I was part of the organizing committee of the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference to raise awareness of the importance of renewable energy technologies and promote worldwide investment for a rapid scale-up of these technologies. There were approximately 9,000 participants from 126 countries and 103 ministers who discussed a wide range of issues from research and development to market deployment, finance, agriculture and rural development.
I am now using the momentum generated by this conference to examine the current science and technology partnership agreements between the U.S. and foreign countries and to promote collaborative research and development in energy technologies. I am also promoting regional cooperation on science and technology issues, particularly focusing on energy security.
4. The push for new forms of fuel and the current state of our environment has become a hot topic and one of the areas of your research. What are the potential future implications of this work?
The findings we reported last year provided new insight into the properties of nanomaterials that can store hydrogen with large gravimetric density. The success of a hydrogen economy depends upon our ability to find materials that can store hydrogen as a fuel to drive a car with a range of 300 miles. Researchers around the world are working on improving material properties by following our theoretical guidelines. We are continuing to design new materials that have improved properties from what we predicted last year and these studies are guiding new experiments. We are hopeful that new solid state materials for hydrogen storage will be found that meet the industry requirement.
5. Describe your work on the creation of the “nano-bullet.”
A few years ago, our team created a so-called “nano-bullet” that targets tumors and may help develop non-invasive cancer treatments. We found that when gold particles are reduced to a few nanometers they become highly reactive and readily bind to silica clusters, allowing the clusters to absorb infrared light and create enough heat to potentially kill cancer tumors. Silica is the main element in sand. Larger gold nanoparticles coated with silica have been shown to treat tumors successfully. We have continued this line of work by further studying gold-coated magnetic nanoparticles that are made up of iron or iron oxide. These can be used for treatment of cancers by a method known as magnetic fluid hyperthermia. We have demonstrated that gold coating prevents these particles from oxidation while maintaining their magnetic field strength. This fundamental understanding is necessary for the design of new materials for the treatment of cancer.
6. Where do you see the future of research in physics headed?
Moving forward, we’ll continue to explore new frontiers where a fundamental understanding of phenomena is lacking and where this understanding can lead to new technologies. In the field of condensed matter physics, I expect that the nanoscale will continue to be a topic of great interest and new materials that can shape the technology of the future will be discovered.